UPDATE: The Oral, The Written, and Other Verbal Media: Interfaces and Audiences (6/30/07; 6/19/08-6/21/08)

Call for Proposals for "The Oral, The Written, and Other Verbal Media:Interfaces and Audiences": A Conference and Festival

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, June 19-21,2008

The organizers of the first international, interdisciplinary,cross-cultural, and trans-historical conference and festival focusing onthe interface of the oral and the written invite proposals forparticipation. In keeping with the plenitude of modes and forms of oraland textual discourse, the organizers will welcome diverse modes ofpresentation, including, but not limited to, oral performances, academictalks and panels, readers' theatre (dramatized readings of scholarlydialogues), workshops, and projects-in-progress sessions. Our goal is togenerate conversations among performers, audiences, and scholars,including graduate students, from a wide range of academic disciplines,cultures, and historical periods, and to foster opportunities forcollaboration among those interested in speech and other voicings on thepage. Because Saskatoon is located in a territory highly populated withIndigenous peoples whose oral traditions are still vital and developing,the festival will highlight Aboriginal performers in a Crow Hop Caf'featuring storytelling, Indigenous Hip Hop, music, and other oralperformances.

Are you studying legal contracts in medieval Europe as they move fromthe oral to the written, or Indigenous treaty narratives fromdecolonizing parts of the world? Are you asking what happens to oralstories when they are transmuted into fiction, drama, printed poetry, orvisual media? Are you trying to reconstruct the oral delivery of sermonsor epics on the basis of their printed forms? Are you working withElders on the transcription of oral narratives, and would you like todiscuss successes and obstacles in a workshop with others engaged orinterested in this sort of work? Are you an oral storyteller/keeper ordub or spoken word poet interested in talking about your practice withscholars? Do you have other ideas for workshops related to theconference and festival theme? If you see your work reflected in theseor related questions, please contact us.

Other issues and topics that might be addressed:- aesthetics, ethics, & politics at the interface of the oral & the written- the body &/or gender at the interface of the oral & the written- contesting writing's empire- memory and commemoration at the interface of the oral and the written- oral occasions, contexts, circumstances & modes of public address asrepresented in writing- oral and written poetics & modes of meaning-making- orality, textuality, & authority; orality, textuality, & modernity- orature, writing, and genre: sacred narratives, proverbs, jokes,ballads, sagas, legends, folklore, sermons, oratory, & disputations- recording oral narratives for community histories or school curriculum- translation/transcreation of orature- the oral and the written in visual arts- strategies for textualizing the oral- what audiences are well or ill served by textualizing the oral